Team China seeks revenge at 2018 ITTF Men's World Cup

China's Fan Zhendong and Lin Gaoyuan have arrived in Paris for the 2018 ITTF Men's World Cup on Wednesday.

Fan and Lin have already played against each other in the final of men's singles at the 2018 Asian Games before Fan beat Lin to claim the gold medal. 

Young paddlers Lin Gaoyuan (left) and Fan Zhendong will represent China at the 2018 Men's ITTF World Cup. [Photo: CGTN]

In 2016, Fan also won his first World Cup championship after defeating his compatriot Xu Xin in the final. Having been known as Team China's promising young man in the past, today's Fan is already one of the best table tennis players for the country.

The goal for the Chinese pair is to regain the championship lost in 2017, when Germany's Dimitrij Ovtcharov won the title. Ovtcharov's teammate Timo Boll knocked out Lin in the quarter-final and defeated Ma Long in the semi-final.

That prevented China's seventh consecutive championship of the event.

The other big threat to China is the 15-year-old Tomokazu Harimoto from Japan. Having won men's singles champion at the Seamaster 2018 ITTF World Tour Lion Japan Open, Harimoto also entered semi-finals of the Tour in Australia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.  

The 2018 World Cup will last three days (from October 19 to 21) and short schedule adds more randomness to the competition. Therefore, players cannot afford to ignore relatively weak rivals, not to mention the true big threatening opponents.